District officials on Monday said they’ve applied for a permanent building permit for The Aston unhoused shelter, which they expect will near capacity this week.
D.C. Department of Human Services Deputy Administrator Anthony Newman said at a Community Advisory Team meeting on Monday that The Aston, an unhoused shelter on New Hampshire Avenue and former GW dorm, is “quickly approaching” 100 residents, and he expects the total number of guests to reach just under 100 by the week’s end. The CAT, a local group overseeing community engagement surrounding The Aston, voted to raise the maximum number of unhoused residents living in the facility from 50 to 100 in January, and the shelter’s occupancy has inched higher since, in line with the phased move-in system officials announced in September.
D.C. Department of Buildings Associate Director of External Affairs John Stokes said District officials on Monday applied for a permanent certificate of occupancy and an extension to their temporary certificate for The Aston, which is set to expire April 21, according to temporary the permit issued in January. The Aston since November has operated under a temporary certificate of occupancy, a “short-term permit given by building authorities” that allows it to operate while “final work is completed,” according to the DOB.
“We’re also looking at an extension of the temporary C of O we currently have, just to make sure we cross our T’s and dot our I’s,” Stokes said.
The DOB’s website states that it typically takes seven days for officials to approve certificates of occupancy. Before issuing the permanent permit, inspectors from the DOB will review The Aston on April 21 for deficiencies, like outdated fire exits and “door closers,” which caused the Department to reject the initial permit application in October.
CAT Co-Chair Sakina Thompson said Tyler Edge, the special assistant to DHS Chief of Staff David Ross, is working to launch the DHS-administered shelter website and said they will incorporate community feedback they collected at an open house on March 31. Edge first presented a draft of the site in March and was not present at the meeting in April.
The website is stipulated in the nonlegally-binding Good Neighbor Agreement, which outlines the communication local residents can expect from DHS, the CAT and Friendship Place, The Aston’s provider. DHS planned to publish the website before the shelter opened in November and still have not provided a firm launch date.
“It is definitely on the front burner, and we will hopefully get more substantial progress before the next time we meet,” Thompson said.
Newman said attendees of The Aston’s second open house — which allowed community members to tour a unit and common areas in the building on March 31 — were “impressed” with the building. Thompson said about 35 people attended the tour, which she believes assuaged neighbors’ concerns about the “unknown” of the shelter’s operations.
An incorporated group of West End locals sued the city twice and filed a zoning appeal in the past year, all of which they’ve since dropped, in an attempt to prevent The Aston from opening.
Newman, in response to a community member’s question, said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s fiscal year 2026 budget, which she hasn’t released yet, will “fully” fund The Aston and will not change its current budget, meaning he doesn’t expect any operational changes at the facility due to budget constraints.
“I don’t anticipate any changes in the operation of The Aston throughout this next contract period, but again, we will learn more about what’s proposed and what’s approved through the political process that sort of happens above my level,” Newman said.
